Samvel Karapetyan's Article on the Research on Armenian Architecture Organization (RAA)

Samvel Karapetyan's article is devoted to the activities of the Research on Armenian Architecture Organization (RAA) — its goals, field research methodology, and the results of many years of work aimed at identifying Armenian architectural heritage outside the Republic of Armenia.

Introduction and Methodology

The material is structured as an interview with S. Karapetyan, one of the founders and directors of RAA, in which he reveals the history of the organization's creation, the principles behind the selection of research objects, and the working methods of the expeditions. The author traces the researcher's personal path — from youthful hiking trips through Artsakh in the late 1970s to the formation of a full-scale scholarly program encompassing Western Armenia, Cilicia, Georgia, Azerbaijan (including the Nakhichevan Autonomous Region), Iran, and the colonies of the Spyurk (Diaspora).

Scale and Geography of the Research

The article provides statistics on RAA's expeditionary activity up to 2005:

157 expeditions in total, of which 61 were to Western Armenia, 41 to Artsakh, 12 to Iran, 11 to the left bank of the Kura River in Azerbaijan, and others;
the archive contains over 220,000 photographs, more than 71,000 of which have been digitized;
an online resource, "The Storehouse of Armenian Architectural Monuments," has been created.

The Institutional History of RAA

Special attention is given to the history of merging the author's archives with the materials of architect Armen Haghnazarian, who founded the organization in Germany in 1978. The article describes funding difficulties — the refusal of several European companies to provide sponsorship due to their business ties with Turkey — as well as the structure of the organization, which includes branches in Germany, the USA, and Armenia.

Central Thesis: The Deliberate Destruction of Monuments

The article's central thesis concerns the fundamental difference in how states treat Armenian heritage: while in Armenia and Iran monuments are preserved or restored (including with state funds, as in the case of the Surb Tadeos Arakyal monastery, which has been included on the UNESCO list), in Turkey and Azerbaijan their destruction is systematic and deliberate, including cases where monuments have been destroyed by military units.

Source Base

The author describes in detail the methods used to locate lost monuments: the use of memoir testimonies, pre-revolutionary maps produced by the Russian General Staff, NATO and Soviet General Staff military maps, and interviews with local residents, which require prior knowledge of the monument's existence.

Publishing Activities

The article lists RAA's published works and those in preparation, including monographs on Javakhk, Caucasian Albania, Northern Artsakh, and other regions, noting the scholarly significance of the material collected, which surpasses in completeness previous Georgian and other national studies.

Conclusion

The article's key conclusion is that RAA's activity represents a project of documenting Armenian architectural heritage that is unique in its scale and systematic nature, whose significance grows in proportion to the threat of its physical destruction in territories where state policy does not provide for its preservation.